This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: AP
November 1, 2005
The Smithsonian Institution has named a Howard University alumna as director of the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. It's a homecoming of sorts for Camille Giraud Akeju, who lived in Washington during her college years and interned at the Smithsonian. The 55-year-old is currently the president of the Harlem School of the Arts and has spent most of her career in New York.
Source: NYT
October 31, 2005
Egyptian archaeologists, who normally scour the desert in search of treasures of the past, have discovered that one of the greatest caches of antiquities may well be in the basement of the Egyptian Museum. For the last century, artifacts have been stored away in crates there and forgotten, often allowed to disintegrate in the dank, dusty cavern.
Forgotten until now. The recent theft and recovery of three statues from the basement have prompted antiquity officials in Egypt to redoubl
Source: Reuters
October 31, 2005
Israel introduced a watershed resolution in the U.N. General Assembly on Monday that designates January 27 as an annual commemoration day for the 6 million Jews and other victims murdered in the Nazi Holocaust during World War Two.
The measure, expected to be approved on Tuesday by consensus, rejects any denial that the Holocaust took place. It also urges members to "inculcate" future generations with the lessons on the genocide so it would not be repeated in the future.
Source: BBC
October 31, 2005
A new square in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad is to be named after Vladimir Lenin, the Itar-Tass news agency reports. The square in the capital, Kaliningrad, is also set to feature a restored statue of the revolutionary leader. Mayor Yuri Savenko said that opinion polls suggested 18% of the city's population respected Lenin and "we have no right to ignore that". Most Lenin landmarks were renamed after the USSR collapsed in 1991."A symbol of the victory of
Source: NYT
October 31, 2005
Rosa Parks led an inspiring life. Unfortunately, we rarely hear about it. That may sound surprising at a time when Rosa Parks, whose body lay in state in the Capitol on Sunday and Monday, is probably mentioned in every American history textbook and is the subject of dozens of biographies. The problem is that her story is usually presented as a simplistic morality tale that goes like this:On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks is an ordinary 42-year-old seamstress in downtown Montgomery, Ala
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 31, 2005
The former East Germany's feared Stasi secret police set Nazi officers to work as spies and protected them from prosecution, according to a new book that belies the official anti-fascist stance of the communist regime.
Historian Henry Leide drew on Stasi files that have not been opened to the general public since the fall of communism in 1989 to trace the often well-paid careers of 35 of Hitler's men who found a reprieve in the secret police.The case of SS offic
Source: Haartez
October 30, 2005
The United Nations General Assembly will hold a session and vote on the establishment of an international Holocaust remembrance day on Monday. Ninety-one countries have pledged their support for the proposal, which was initiated by Israel. Currently, the measure enjoys a solid majority of 110 votes in favor out of a total of 190 members in the UN.The proposal calls for January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to be recognized as the day which the UN marks
Source: Telegraph (London)
October 29, 2005
Switzerland played a key role in developing South Africa's nuclear weapons programme during apartheid, an investigation has revealed.Peter Hug, a historian whose inquiry was sponsored by the Swiss authorities, said his country "was a pillar of support for the apartheid government".
According to his report, which also found evidence of Germany's role in bolstering the white regime, the Swiss government was aware of illegal deals but "tolerated them
Source: NYT
October 31, 2005
Thousands of people passed Sunday night by the remains of Rosa Parks, the first woman to be honored by lying in the Capitol Rotunda.
Shortly before 8 p.m., the coffin bearing Rosa Parks, the accidental matriarch of the civil rights movement who died last Monday at 92, arrived at the Capitol and was carried by a military guard to lie in the Rotunda.
A seamstress by trade, Mrs. Parks became the first woman ever accorded such a tribute and just the 31st person over all sin
Source: NYT
October 31, 2005
The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian's work say.The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by the N.S.A., the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were f
Source: BBC
October 30, 2005
The Baroque sandstone Frauenkirche dominates the Dresden skyline today as it did in the past. The cranes and scaffolding which covered the Church of Our Lady have been removed and the building dazzles in the sunshine.At 1000 local time, the bells rang out and crowds gathered outside the church to watch the re-consecration ceremony which was broadcast live on a giant screen.The German President, Horst Koehler, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Chancellor-designate
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
The body of Rosa Parks lay in the Capitol Rotunda this morning, on view for thousands of Americans who wanted to honor the woman known as the mother of the civil rights movement. Her death last week has created a moment, many African-Americans engaged in political struggle say, to take stock of what that movement accomplished and whether it is still alive.With the deaths this year of other major figures from a movement that once galvanized a mass following over i
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
Charles W. Colson, the Watergate conspirator turned prison reformer, watched with a sense of déjà vu as I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted Friday in the C.I.A. leak investigation.
"For years in Washington, they've all ended the same way - perjury and obstruction of justice," said Mr. Colson, who pleaded guilty in 1974 to an obstruction charge and served seven months in prison. "I don't know why people don't learn this lesson
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
GEORGE W. BUSH and Karl Rove came to Washington with the boldest of ambitions: to overhaul the nation's political architecture, establishing Republicans as the indisputable majority party for a generation or more. It was a meticulously conceived plan: broaden the Republican base, strip moderates away from the Democrats, even make incursions with such solidly Democratic constituencies as African-Americans. But a White House that has prided itself in thinking in broad historical strokes found itse
Source: BBC News
October 28, 2005
Veterans who fought in Malaya in the 1950s are fighting for the right to wear a medal for their service. Fifty years on, the Malaysian Government wants to honour the British servicemen with the medal but military regulations state that the soldiers cannot wear it. It was a war in everything but name. The Malayan Emergency, as it became known, was a bitter conflict fought against hardened ethnic Chinese communists.
Eventually the British, Malayan and
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
If anyone doubts Merylin Wong's determination in beating the odds and bringing the soon-to-be mothballed battleship Iowa to San Francisco, consider her ordeal not long ago on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central.
Ms. Wong suffered through jokes about her name ("you are barking up the wong tree") and queries about why the battleship that in 1943 carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the conference of Allied leaders in Tehran, Iran, should not b
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
For decades the splendid Baroque church, known throughout Germany as the Frauenkirche, was a ruin - a bleak testament to the Allied bombing raids of February 1945. At least 25,000 people died in the raids and ensuing firestorms, which incinerated Dresden's old city, including the church.
Now, however, the Frauenkirche has been meticulously rebuilt, and its bell-shaped dome once again crowns the skyline. On Sunday, it is to be consecrated in a religious service attended by dozens of
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
In the first public disclosure that the United States military is tracking some of the deaths of Iraqi civilians, the military has released rough figures for Iraqis who have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1 last year. The estimate of dead and wounded Iraqi civilians and security forces was provided by the Pentagon in a report to Congress this month. It appeared without fanfare in a single bar graph on Page 23 of the document. But it was significant bec
Source: The Independent (London)
October 15, 2005
At least 1,400 people " many of them foreign tourists " were stranded at the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu yesterday after a mudslide blocked the famous railway to the site.The high-altitude line from Cuzcu was covered by more than three metres (9.8 feet) deep on Wednesday. Some 400,000 people visit Peru's most famous tourist attraction every year.
Many of the evacuees, who were being moved out by road last night, are Europeans and Americans, a city off
Source: NYT
October 30, 2005
White House scandals in the second term of presidencies have become the rule. Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff was forced from office by accusations of corruption. Richard M. Nixon resigned over Watergate. Ronald Reagan's White House was embroiled in the Iran-contra scheme. Bill Clinton was impeached over his deceptions regarding an affair with a White House intern. But President Bush's situation is different in several respects. Most important, from Mr. Bush's perspective, he is the first
